Morgan's Pier, July 24 - Parquet Courts (Preview)

Word clawing through the filtered commentary on last weekend's Pitchfork Music Festival were that Parquet Courts - the New York-via-Texas DIY punk four-piece still reeling from January's debut Light Up Gold - were stoically efficient. Chicago Tribune manic music mind Greg Kot noted the band's performance as furiously quick, saying;

Parquet Courts piling songs together like bumper cars. Frantic pace then brief silence then back in. Yes #p4k
— Greg Kot (@gregkot) July 20, 2013

For some, the lack of flash may be too much. But for the band that so quickly found themselves daily on indie XM radio stations after only months of steadily raising their name from the cavernous swarm of fellow New York garage groups, Parquet Courts are striving with marvelous efficiency.

Kot later noted in his short-term study of the band that the guitar play leaves trails of glory from former New York garage icons Television. Obviously comparing any newfound flavors of the scene to the illustrious talents that put together Marquee Moon is fairly high, but it does give credit to the easy uniqueness of the group. But now rather than being a modern punk oddity, Parquet Courts is learning to thrive in its aesthetic, courting even more acclaim of the bright future ahead.

The band will be performing free tonight at Philadelphia's Morgan's Pier with Woods, continuing the venue's free summer concert series. The show is set to begin at 9 p.m. Check the Morgan's Pier website for more details.

The Fire, June 25 - Hospital Ships (Preview)

After meandering his way through the likes of Shearwater and Minus Story, in which he contributed various pieces, Kansas-native Jordan Geiger crafted his bedroom pop outfit Hospital Ships.

The band, which will be performing tonight at The Fire in Philadelphia with The Meta and Sean Rosner, is coming off Destruction In Yr Soul, the first with a full band behind Geiger. With the added dimensions, the lifting pop-centric dimensions balloon to something more massive, encapsulating.

The output, although aiming for something much larger than the early versions of the band, still sits comfortably between humble origins and steady progression. Through the band's evolution, that bigger sound crawls past Geiger's predisposed limitations and allows him to move forward to a possibly grander setting.

That vision will look to flourish tomorrow when doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets for the 21-plus show are still available.

Destruction In Yr Soul is out now on Graveface Records.

Tomorrow, PhilaMOCA; Parquet Courts

Saturday, May 4: Brooklyn-via-Texas upstart punks Parquet Courts will be joined by Scott & Charlene's Wedding, Amanda X, and Household for a special $10-only all-ages show at the PhilaMOCA.

It's a return performance for the band, which has been on the road since October after earning some love for the Light Up Gold LP, after performing at Kung Fu Necktie in mid-January. Noisey recently followed the band on the tour, filming stops at Monterrey's Festival Nrmal and SXSW. Check out the footage below to get a little insight on the band's live performances and grab Light Up Gold today on Dull Tools.

First Unitarian Church, April 19 - Iceage (Preview)

Culminating an impossibly stellar lineup of garage punk up-and-comers Night Birds, White Lung, and METZ, is frequent buzzing Dutch four-piece Iceage tonight at Philadelphia's First Unitarian Church. The outstanding youth of the group is still well known, despite crossing over on the U.S. scene roughly two years ago. Still, the power and brevity of the band's most recent LP You're Nothing on a jump to Matador makes Iceage leading the other bands almost unquestionable.

The Copenhagen band, led by workaholic at-heart Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (who's still churning out stuff as part of Marching Church and Vår), feeds on torrid momentum on You're Nothing, taking the exhausted jubilant nature of New Brigade without relinquishing the - as Anthony Fantano says it best - "chaotic apathy." The sounded is refined - something fairly improbable for any version of punk - but patterns and melodies don't just seem thrown in from varying minds of the band, rather, sticking as a whole scheme.

Whether or not that tooling of the technique means anything for the band's live persona should hold high, given the years of touring and the vigorous attitude the band has towards moving forward. It has to, regardless, because a lineup featuring White Lung and METZ will have plenty craving for a righteous finale.

Tickets for the show are still available, with doors opening at 7 p.m. and beginning at 7:30.

Union Transfer, Mar. 8 - Django Django (Preview)

Nailing down where alternative music's waves are flowing towards is really a matter of two directions, more often than not. Sure there are sub-genres going through strings of mutant mitosis every week, creating splendid off-breeds of the sounds we all know and love. But to put it simply, there are two primary directions: revivalism and new.

Django Django are unflinchingly new. The London band's post new-wave is branded with neo-futurism to a degree that makes MGMT look like its falling behind. Sprinting through the band's 13-track self-titled debut from last year and its hard to say there's much resonance from sound to sound other than the uncommon ambition to sound like no one else is doing it.

Handclaps, bizarro Afrofusion, glam, and even mulling electro spacing are all here. Sometimes all on the same song like "Firewater," which drifts and dreams like its plowing through the desert before sunset. It's a long-winded description for something that seems like ambition, which will certainly be on play tonight.

Alongside the group at Philadelphia's spectacular Union Transfer will be Minneapolis band Night Moves, which were featured on the site last August. Tickets for the show are still available here, with doors opening at 8 p.m.

Johnny Brenda's, Feb. 1 - Buke And Gase (Preview)

Aron Sanchez and Aron Dyer, the same-named duo better known as NY piece Buke and Gase, are pulling themselves up. After years of twisting obscurity and figuring out their own mechanized ambitions, the two pieced together the metallic churn of Riposte in 2010.

Despite the size, as I've noted before, the two cull their sounds to seem bigger than themselves. Pedals - pedals everywhere. Watching Aron and Aron live as they maneuver their feet across a staggering amount of extra pieces seems exhausting. In a way, that seemed to be the living appeal of Buke and Gase - so much in such a small scene. The side-effect with Riposte seemed to be, however, stagnation. The band understood what worked but rarely strayed from it.

While the setup remains largely the same, the noise pop constructions on the band's latter two releases - the Function Falls EP and the recent General Dome LP - flirts with the idea of something bigger. The melodies twist into an experimental mesh, not necessarily dragging through to seem overly sensible. The methods are challenging, almost improbable to replicate considered how contorted the band's homemade instrument set is. It's the affirmative move from kitsch to positively unique.

Catch the duo in Philadelphia tomorrow night at Johnny Brenda's. The band will be preceded by fellow art-rockers Ahleuchatistas and Norwegian Arms. Tickets are still available here.